My first game of '08

Here's my game from Tuesday night. I played a kid, but he's rated 100 points higher than me. I thought I did a decent job with the queenless middlegame.

This is also my first forray with using Chess Publisher. It looks good so far.

My notes are from my own thoughts after the game, with no computer help. That's another resolution for 2008; to analyze my tournament games without an engine first, then to check it with Rybka et. al.

Resolute

One of my resolutions is to pick up the blog again, so here I am!

'07 was a good year. The Blitz almost made it to the championship. It has been covered in minute detail elsewhere, so I won't elaborate.

My job as Blitz Manager this year was very easy. With newly minted Senior Master Denys Shmelov (he just broke 2400 at the North American open in Vegas) and the country's #1 18 year old Chris Williams able to play boards three and four respectively, and GM Larry "Legend" Christiansen at board one almost every week, all I had to do was find out who was around to play board two. Fortunately Jorge "Mi Salvador" Sammour-Hasbun was able to play a lot and he came through big time. Again, extensive coverage is elsewhere, primarily at Chris Bird's excellent http://www.boston-blitz.com official team site, and of course http://www.uschessleague.com.

The best story of the year was in week three when Jorge's first move as white vs. Bryan Smith, intended to be 1. d4, was incorrectly relayed as 1. e4, and Jorge said "That's OK. It must be a sign." Well, not only did he win, but that game was chosen for the next NY Times chess column!

My chess is going OK, though my rating has dipped dangerously close to 1600, I think it's because I'm trying different openings, and even totally different styles lately. One thing I've learned from relaying all of Larry's games for the Blitz is that sharp tactics can arise in almost any position; you don't need to force the issue. So, I'm resolving to play more solidly, especially more carefully (almost all my losses are because of an egregious blunder on my part), and let the tactics flow where they may.
I finally had the epiphany (well, more like a "duh!" moment) that doing "Black to move first" tactics problems, helps me spot my opponents threats better.

I also resolve to actually, really, truly spend some time working on chess every day this year. Hopefully an hour or more; at least 30-40 minutes doing tactics puzzles on the train ride to and from work. I've been pretty good at that lately, and my performance in the end-of-year G/10 quick play tournament at the Metrowest club is encouraging. I beat three class "A" players, drew an expert (Derek!), and drew another class "A" (Neil!). My only two losses were to masters Lawyer Times and Charles Riordan. Not too shabby. I gained almost 200 quick rating points in one tournament! Goes to show how silly the USCF Quick ratings really are.

The Amateur Team East is coming up soon! This year the goal of getting "behind the ropes" is looking highly possible. More on that later.

Happy New Year to all.

9/11

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was a Tuesday. I remember this because Tuesday is chess night, and that day was no exception. The stunning horror of the morning was followed by the trepidation of mid-day. Were there really nine more planes still in the air? Were government buildings all across the country going to be next? Roads? Bridges? Will I be able to get home? Then the oppressive sadness set in. Friends of friends were missing (later confirmed killed). My kids were sent home from kindergarten; what would we tell them? How many thousands were dead? How many kids wouldn't be picked up from school?

But then, it was Tuesday night. Time to go to the club and play round two of the monthly tournament. Another Tuesday like hundreds before and since. The obvious gravity of our moods was different, but everything else was comfortably the same. We all waited for the pairings to come out, then we sat and played. Four hours of intense concentration. Four hours of thinking about something else. Four hours of weekly routine. This is why I play chess. Nearly fifty people gathered on the most horrific day I can remember and did something they love. They played a game. The best game there is.

Another Chain Post

OK, Reassembler has tagged me again for one of those web-tag-blog-post-thingies. So here it is: "Eight Random Facts About Yourself"

Rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been tagged.

Facts:

I was in a Strat-O-Matic Baseball league for twenty years.

Strat-O-Matic is like Dungeons & Dragons for Baseball. It's been around for generations; long before Fantasy Baseball. The name of my team was "The Manila Folders." You can check the archives of the league's website, The SOMBILLA.

I have only lived in the state of Massachusetts.

The first computer I ever wrote a program for was a PDP-8.

I never graduated from college.

I have flown (and landed!) an airplane.

Though I never got around to soloing, I made dozens of touch-and-gos without instructor interference.


I have a Gigabit wired network in my house with four computers, and three TiVos on it.

I have three kids. They were all born on October 3rd. They are not triplets.

There is one set of twins, then their brother was born on their fourth birthday. The twins were six weeks early, and the third was two weeks late, so it's just random.

I am a co-author on a paper entitled "Optical Spectroscopy of Type Ia Supernovae."

I spent a night at the Whipple Observatory in Arizona, with a real astronomer, taking multi-wavelength images of white blobs. They were actually stars that had expoded in other galaxies. My name is in the image header files, hence I'm in the paper.



I'm not going to follow the rules and tag other people by name. If you read this, consider yourself tagged.

-Matt

Blitz Coverage Moved

For those of you checking this blog every five minutes for coverage of the Boston Blitz Chess Team, we have moved to a new team home page. Check out http://www.boston-blitz.com.

The site is still being fleshed out a bit, but the witty repartee of yours truly will appear in some form of regular column.

First match is this Wednesday at 9:00 PM Eastern (8:00 Central) against the Ballardless Seattle Sluggers.

I've finally been tagged.

This survey has been going around the chess blogosphere. Steve Eddins finally tagged me:

1. How long have you been playing chess? Have you played it consistently since you started, or were there lulls in your play? How did these lulls affect your performance?

I remember learning the game during Fischer - Spassky when vacationing on Cape Cod in August of 1972. I was seven. My older brother taught me the moves and it gave us something to do during a hot summer with no TV.

I didn't start playing seriously until high school, in the early eighties. When I started, I thought that pieces, not just pawns, could capture en-passant. My first tournament game was in the summer of '81. I still have the scoresheet. My first rating was 1014.

A couple of times I stopped playing for a few years, but I kept coming back. In 2000 I started playing at the MetroWest Chess Club, in Natick, MA and haven't stopped since.

My performance hasn't changed much in 25 years, so I don't know if the lulls affected my play.

2. Aside from playing games, what is your primary mode of training?

Training? What training? Seriously, I don't do too much more than play every Tuesday. I do some tactics problems, some blitz on ICC. I love watching live GM games on ICC and trying to figure out what's going on.

3. What is the single most helpful method of improvement that you have ever used?

Improvement? I think the biggest jump I got recently was when I read John Nunn's "Understanding Chess Move by Move"a few times, cover to cover, without using a board.

4. What is your favorite opening to play as white? As black against e4? As black against d4?

As white, I'm primarily an e4 player, Scotch Gambit, Smith-Morra, or 2. b3 against the Sicilain or French. Whatever, really. I sometimes venture the Dragon against e4, or the Leningrad (St. Petersburg?) Dutch vs. d4.

I've been trying more classical openings lately too.

5. Who is your favorite chess player and why?

Everyone loves Tal, I played him in a simul once. I remember I blundered an exchange early. Then I set up a cheapo which won it back, and he actually picked up a piece to move which would of allowed it. But he put it back (which is allowed in a simul, as long as he doesn't make a move on the next board), stopped and thought for a minute or so. That was a victory in and of itself for me. He wagged his index finger at me and clucked "Tsk, tsk, tsk," and moved out of the combo. I made an exaggerated "aw shucks" finger snap which made him smile. That's my Tal story.

6. What is your favorite chess book?

"The Game of Chess" by Edward Lasker. Each lesson had a "turn to page XX" for one answer, or another page for for a different answer. If you got it wrong, it explained why. I believe this was re-released in algebraic as "Chess: The Complete Self-Tutor", but even that's not available anymore.

7. What book would you recommend for a friend who knows only the rules of chess?

"Chess Fundamentals" by Capablanca. "The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal", "Fire on Board" by Shirov, or any decent games collection.

8. Do you play in in-person tournaments? What is your favorite tournament experience?

Yes, every Tuesday night at MetroWest. I look forward to the Amateur Team East in NJ every year. It's my annual indulgence.

9. Please give us a link to what you consider your best two blog posts (on your own blog).

http://globularchess.blogspot.com/2006/11/uscl-nicknames.html

http://globularchess.blogspot.com/2006/08/boston-30-miami-10.html

10. What proportion of total chess time should be spent studying openings for someone at your level?

How the f^&k should I know?


I tag Reassembler, but he's on vacation for a couple of weeks so just chill everyone.

Alive

Yeah, yeah... I know. I haven't posted in, like, forever. I'm alive.

Not chess related, but I was quoted in the NY Times. Pretty damn cool.

On the chess/blogoshpere front, most of my time now is spent on my USATE teammate Derek's blog Reassembler. It's one of my favorites. Wicked eclectic. Derek and I keep finding out that we have a lot of stuff in common. Wives that are graphic designers, a connection to Kentucky, hanging out in bars called "The Rat". It's kinda creepy... :)

GM LarryC gave a shout out to our team, "lead by the mighty Matt Phelps" in a letter to the editor in the latest edition of Chess Horizons. Here's a link to the magazine's home page. Unfortunately, the letter isn't online. If you can, I recommend checking it out. It's entertaining!


The Boston Blitz 2007 season in the US Chess league is beginning to heat up. Games begin the last Wednesday of August. Stay tuned for news and info regarding the Blitz's third season.

More later...

-Matt

The Secret to Chess Improvement

I recently revealed in the comments to my previous post that I am, in fact, a lazy-ass mo' fo'. I haven't been working at all on my game, so (naturally) I figured this is the time to start playing a new (to me) opening repetoire. What secret side-line, universal, study-free "system" am I employing? Which slew of books have I ordered promising an easy, worry-free time of it?

None.

I've decided to start playing classical, main-line openings with minimal, if any, work memorizing lines and just play chess; and it's working. I've won my last three games with a Ruy Lopez as white, a Taimanov Sicilian with black, and a Classical French as white. For each, I've spent about 10-30 minutes looking at some typical set-ups and off I went. This is forcing me to just think about the positions I get instead of trying to remember the move order for moves 13 through 15 in the Dragon 9. O-O-O line. It's very refreshing and surprisingly stress free. I now think I'm more in tune with the whole game as opposed to ending up in some position I'm not familiar with because my opponent deviated from what I knew.

I guess all the advice about not studying openings and just getting to a decent middle game is true.

Apart from obvious opening tricks, I don't think there's anyone below Master level that can beat me outright with superior book knowledge. Sure, they may get a "better" opening out of it, but I think I'm good enough to avoid a completely losing position. Then I get the chance to bamboozle them with tactics, at worst I might have to save a worse ending. That can be fun too :)

-Matt

2000 Games in 366 days

No, not playing that many...

Dan Heisman, in his "Novice Nook" column on ChessCafe.com (it's near the bottom, in the Q&A section), thinks going over 2000 annotated games is needed to improve. Seems like a reasonable goal to shoot for in a year. It's about 5 1/2 games per day, and if they're gone over quickly, that can easily be done. So, that is my latest goal; 2000 games in 366 days (2008 is a leap year!), March 1st 2007 to February 29th 2008.

I'm already behind. Yesterday I went over two games at Chesspublishing.com (highly recommended, BTW), so I need to do nine today to catch up. No problem.

I have many sources, from game collection books, annotated games online (the new USCF site is even decent for that), back issues of "New In Chess", etc. If anyone knows of more online sources, please let me know.

I'll keep you posted.

-Matt

Pics!

"Simple Minds" playing at the USATE Tournament, 2007.



I have set up a Flickr album for my USATE pictures here.

No shots of Larry C. and Joel Benjamin drinking rum, dang.

-Matt